vault113 | WEEK 1 MINGLE

'cuz it's a sin to tell a lie.

Week 1

As you sleep, you find your mind plagued with strange dreams. You’re still trapped, of course, there’s no way to avoid that, even in the comfort of your own mind, but you’re alone. Utterly alone. The radios and jukeboxes scattered around the place all spring to life, as if they’re speaking to you directly. On the other end, you see people talk about you. From your own perspective, it can’t have been more than… 48 hours since you were taken. From the perspectives of those on the outside, the times don’t match up nearly so well. It might have been days. It might have been weeks. It might have been months.

The voices discuss you. They discuss the way things have changed. They talk about how you just suddenly disappeared without a trace. Maybe they’re glad, glad that you weren’t around to see what happened without you. Or maybe they’re angry. Maybe they know that it was your fault. If only you’d been there, none of this would have happened. If you’d met up with that friend, they wouldn’t have died. If you’d been there to save her, things would have been different. If you had apologized, maybe… or if you hadn’t abandoned your responsibilities…

You don’t get the specifics either way. Your dream - or vision, it leaves your imagination to do all the work. But there’s one thing you can be absolutely sure of.

You are running out of time.

Well, what’s there to be glum about? The vault is your home now, lovingly prepared by Vault-Tec™! Who cares what some ghosts from the past have to say about you, eh? It’s not like you’ll ever see them again.

And no matter how deeply you were sleeping, The Overseer’s voice sounds out on the intercom and seems to wake you immediately.

“Hello, lovelies. We’ve decided to be extra generous to all of you, so we bring some good news for a change. I’m sure in the last few days, you’ve gotten pretty sick of that walled off little cellblock you’re cramped in, so you’ll be positively giddy to learn that we’ve prepared and unlocked the rest of the first level for you all to explore to your heart’s content. If you’ve given up on ever getting out of here, make yourself at home. If you haven’t, well, there’s plenty of fun and interesting tools to integrate into your work whenever you decide to take advantage the former group’s complete lack of initiative or willpower.

Oh, and before I forget… check the common room before you go.”

With that particularly nasty announcement, you will find that the doors that locked the rest of this floor off to you have all been opened up. And in addition to that, the profiles have been made public, joining the rules as framed pictures in the common room.

And if you wish to contact your Overseer or her robotic assistant, you are free to stop for a chat.

NAVIGATION

Vault 113: a short-run murdergame

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hey, you.

[ Klaasje calls softly from the doorway, respectful of the movie playing. There are spots of color on her cheeks, and post-shower, she's lost some of the sadly limp patina that covered her before. She even found...something...to blacken around her eyes with.

She saunters into the room and sits on a desk near Sigma, swinging her legs at the knees. ]

What are we watching?

[ he could feel someone's presence on the doorway, but only acknowledges her once she speaks up. the movie is still playing, but his eyes follow her cautiously as she makes her way to the desk.

he'll pick up the empty case, handing it to her before turning his face back to the screen. ]

One of the movies here. It seems pretty old, but luckily it still works.

[ Klaasje turns the case over in her hands. She doesn't recognize it, but there's something almost familiar about the art style. ]

Is it any good so far?

[ 'is it good' is a question that's far too subjective for someone like sigma. he tilts his head owlishly at her, and then turns back to the movie that continues to play in the midst of his conversation.

is it...a good movie? what makes a movie good?

sigma considers this for a couple seconds in silence, before ultimately nodding. ]

Yes, I think it's good.

[ it has the cheapest side effects known to the 1950s. ]

[ All the movies Klaasje has seen were on reels run through projectors, and most of them had about this quality of artifice.

She puts the case aside and crosses her feet at the ankles, returning her attention to the screen. ]

Is that the hero? The one with the slicked back hair.

[ sigma nods. ]

It looks like it.

[ the scene changes and so do the characters, revealing some scientist-looking person with light hair and a deranged look in their eyes. he points. ]

That's the villain.

He doesn't look like he's keeping it together well.

[ As befits a mad scientist's downward spiral. ]

What did he do that's so bad?

Created a giant insect. An ant.

[ he says this with utmost seriousness. ]

Ugh.

[ She's very serious, herself. ]

First spiders, now ants. Too many bugs for me.

So, what do you think they're going to do to stop it?

I don't know.

[ maybe a bomb? maybe a stratospheric gun? missiles? there's so many possibilities. ]

What do you think?

Mm.

[ Klaasje tilts her head, eyes half-lidding in the flickering light of the screen. ]

It's a spatial problem, right? It's too big. So maybe something that works with...dimension.

What if they made a very large pale latitude compressor? Ants don't have complicated brains. It wouldn't be able to deal with the noise.

[ It's a really smart answer. Very scientific. She thinks some of it might even be close to right. ]

A...

[ sigma tilts his head, mouthing the words as if trying to grasp the meaning of them. he knows what they mean separately, but together is a whole different story. ]

What is that?

It's one of the machines that lets radios transmit signals through the pale.

[ It doesn't faze her that he hasn't heard of it. Honestly, if not for Ruby, Klaasje might not have known what a pale latitude compressor was, and she went to university. It's just not something most people think about. ]

Imagine two dots on a piece of paper. You want them to touch, but the paper is too thin to fold, and you can't draw a line. So you sort of...crumple it.

[ They're getting out of her depth. ]

The pale is the paper, the dots are the isolas. Or something like that. Ruby's the one who knows anything about it. She works in transportation.

[ sigma doesn't consider himself a very bright person, so it takes him a couple seconds to think about the information just provided. ]

So by transmitting radio signals through the pale, that way you have instant communication with each other?

Not instant.

[ Her only salvation is that she can seem like she knows what she's talking about. ]

Not necessarily, anyway. Sometimes the messages get where they're going before they're even sent.

I don't know why. That's all entroponetics. We didn't cover that in my university.

WEEK 1 MINGLE

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